The background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Print shops have traditionally served the local community in which they've been located. This relative isolation allowed print shops to tailor their services and capabilities to the needs of that particular community. With that, the terminology of a print shop's offerings evolved to fit those products and services. The printing options and capabilities available to a community were limited to those that a local print shop could provide. Conversely, the available market of a print shop was limited to the local community. The development of modern data communications enabled print shops to offer expanded capabilities to their local and internet customers by being able to delegate some or all of a print job to other print shops. Similarly, print shops could expand their potential for business by taking on print jobs from other print shops in other communities needing to reach out to meet their demands.
Delegating print jobs to other shops created a new problem: an inconsistency of the printed product executed by other print shops. Because of the individual, unique terminology used by the isolated of community print shop and their customers, print shops have struggled to accurately communicate to other shops how to properly execute the print job, and as such, the print shops executing the print jobs have struggled to produce an output of printed product that accurately reflects the submitted order by the original customer at an acceptable quality. Consequently, customers used to a certain product resulting from a submitted order may end up getting print product of a quality that is different than they are used to from their usual print shop, thus damaging the reputation of their “regular” print shop. Middle-man systems to match print shops looking to outsource their work with those willing to handle the outsourced work use static standards that do not allow the individual print shops to accurately submit or reproduce print jobs.
Furthermore, the delivery of the product with either or both print shops' names attached to them is confusing to customers as to who is actually responsible for the quality of the product they receive (in either positive or negative quality scenarios).
Others have attempted to address this discrepancy. US 2016/0328789 to Grosz, US 2006/0132815 to Lofthus, and US 2006/0031585 to Nielsen all attempt to tackle the inconsistencies of a print job distributed amongst different printers. However, none of them address inconsistencies arising from the disparate terminology used by individual shops to ensure a quality, consistent output by print shops selected to execute some or all of a print job originated by a requesting print shop.
Thus, there is still a need for a system of ensuring a consistent generation of a printed product even where the terminology between a requesting print shop and an executing print shop are distinct. There is also a need for a system that allows for the correction of terminology interpretation so as to allow print shops to increase the likelihood that their terminology will be properly applied in the submission and/or execution of print jobs that they respectively create or receive for execution.